West of Memphis’ explores the lives of 3 men convicted of murder

Damien Echols was one of the West Memphis Three, who were railroaded through a Razorback court system that sentenced him to death for the 1993 murders of three 8-year-old boys, and did so without a lick of physical evidence, or a single eyewitness.

By Al Alexander

The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, MA

By Al Alexander

Posted Mar. 2, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Mar 2, 2013 at 2:12 AM

By Al Alexander

Posted Mar. 2, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Mar 2, 2013 at 2:12 AM

» Social News

In the United States, “justice” is nothing but a word. If it really prevailed, as many believe, Casey Anthony, O.J. Simpson and those thieving Wall Street bankers would never escape it. And innocent teenagers like those of the Central Park Five and the West Memphis Three would never see their youth stolen by prosecutors and judges pursuing political gain instead of the truth. Those are the hard and, yes, justified beliefs of Damien Echols, an innocent man who spent half of his 38 years wrongly incarcerated in an Arkansas prison.

As the alleged leader of the West Memphis Three, he was railroaded through a Razorback court system that sentenced him to death for the 1993 murders of three 8-year-old boys, and did so without a lick of physical evidence, or a single eyewitness. Rather, he and his co-defendants, Jason Baldwin and the developmentally challenged Jessie Misskelley, were found guilty simply because of the way they looked and dressed, which prosecutors said was like members of a satanic cult.

It’s tempting to say they were targets of the same brand of justice allotted victims of the Salem Witch Trials, which might help explain why after finally winning his release from prison in 2011, Echols made the North Shore city his home. But Echols says the West Memphis Three were merely more victims of courts intent on securing a conviction instead of solving a crime.

“People keep asking me about changing the legal system, and I tell them, ‘take politics out of it,’” Echols said during a recent interview at, irony of all ironies, Boston’s Liberty Hotel, formerly the Suffolk County Jail. “Just look at us: The guy who was attorney general during our trials is now the governor; the current attorney general (who refused to consider new DNA evidence) is running for governor; our judge ran for Senate: the prosecutor ran for Congress. We were 100 percent a pawn in their political aspirations.”

Echols, who is promoting “West of Memphis,” a new documentary (opening March 15) about the trio’s ordeal, said he might still be rotting in solitary confinement if not for the efforts of a Greek chorus of celebrities (most notably Johnny Depp, Natalie Maines and Eddie Vedder) and the money and clout supplied by “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson and his wife and partner, Fran Walsh, both of whom serve as producers on “West of Memphis.”

“Peter and Fran were like the heart of the legal team,” said Echols, dressed in a black T-shirt accentuating the horde of tattoos cascading down his arms. “It wasn’t like they were just making a movie or throwing money at it. They were actually working on the case every single day.”

That work, which included hiring a former FBI profiler and footing the hefty bill for DNA testing, paid off in winning the trio’s release in August 2011. But it fell short of proving their innocence. To save face, and in hopes of chasing Echols, his famous supporters and the national media out of Arkansas, the state offered the trio what’s called an Alford Plea, a bit of legalese granting them their freedom, if they pleaded guilty and accepted a sentence of time served. It also provided the state an easy out from a potentially embarrassing retrial.

Page 2 of 3 - “When you are watching the documentary, you’re seeing the case we would have put on had we gone to court,” said Echols, who had mixed feelings about accepting the Alford deal. He views it not as selling out, but as an opportunity to be with his wife, Lorri, and better facilitate the fight to clear his name.

“Eventually, we will all be exonerated; hopefully within the next five years,” Echols said. “Most people said we would never get out of prison, and we’re sitting here now. It’s going to be a long, hard fight, just like getting out was. We don’t have a choice but to keep pushing.

“The state of Arkansas would like nothing better than to have us shut up so they can sweep this under the rug. I won’t lie to you. I hate talking about this case. I despise it. The last thing in the world I want to do is get up every single day to talk about the most horrible f**king thing that ever happened to me. But if we don’t, we’re never going to get that exoneration; we’re never going to have a sense of closure.”

Another hurdle Echols has been tackling is the outside world. “Before I got out, I had not seen sunlight for 10 years,” he said in explaining why he wears shades at all times, even indoors. “There’s also a lot – and I mean a lot – of anxiety and stress and fear. For the first two or three months I was out, I could not function at all because I was in such a deep state of shock and trauma. People don’t understand that. They expect you to be happy that you are out of prison, and they expect you to hit the ground running. You can’t because you are traumatized beyond anything most people in this world will ever know.”

On the plus side, he can now spend time with Lorri, a New Yorker who spotted an article in the paper about the West Memphis Three in 1996, moved to Arkansas and made it her life’s mission to help spring the trio. Eventually, she and Echols fell in love and married while he was still incarcerated. In addition to being with Lorri, Echols is also relishing the opportunity to fulfill a dream of seeing his beloved Boston Red Sox in person.

“When I was a kid, it was the St. Louis Cardinals because they were the team closest to us,” said Echols, who made his first pilgrimage to Fenway soon after his release. “My grandmother watched practically every game, so it became like background noise in our house. It was like a security blanket, you know, a source of comfort. So over the years Boston started to look to me to be the epitome of baseball, not a corporation, not one of these new franchise teams, but what the spirit of baseball is supposed to feel like.”

Page 3 of 3 - He said the Sox are an example of the many pleasures he now enjoys that most people take for granted.

“It really does come down to the little things, like going out at night and walking down the street and being able to look up and see the moon and the stars,” he said. “To feel the wind and the rain, being able to make decisions for yourself, when and if you’re going to take a shower, what you are going to eat for dinner.”

He even enjoys traveling the country promoting both his book, “Life After Death,” and the movie, which covers much the same ground as the three “Paradise Lost” documentaries, but better streamlines 19 years of information, while also lacing in reams of new evidence, most of it pointing toward the stepfather of victim Stevie Branch.

“They had no physical evidence against us, whatsoever, but against this guy, they’ve got DNA that places both him and the man providing him an alibi at the crime scene,” said Echols.

Besides, Echols says he has his own worries. And with each passing day, he’s confident justice, whatever that word means, will be his.

“I’ve come a long way in the year since I got out,” he said, “but there’s still a long way to go.